Harvard in 1815. From 1815 to 1817, Tayloe studied law under United States Attorney General Richard Rush. When Rush was appointed Minister to Great Britain in 1817, Tayloe was named his Private Secretary. While in London, he lived at 15 King Street, Portman Square. He visited often with many of Great Britain's most influential politicians and nobility, and became close friends with the young painter Washington Allston and the author Washington Irving. He was presented to the Prince Regent, George, in 1818. He also traveled widely in Europe, Ireland, and Scotland, and was an observer at the Congress of Aix-la-Chapelle in 1818. He traveled to Paris in the spring of 1819, where Minister to France Albert Gallatin introduced him to King Louis XVIII and Talleyrand. Tayloe returned to the United States in November 1819 and settled at Windsor (his inherited family estate in King George County, Virginia), where he began writing for various horse racing and horse breeding publications. On November 8, 1824, Tayloe married Julia Maria Dickinson of Troy, New York. The couple had six children: John (born 1826), Edward (born 1829), Estelle (born 1833), Anna (born 1834), Eugenie (born 1835), and Julia (born 1838). Anna died when just two years old. Although Tayloe preferred to live at Windsor, his wife asked that they move into the city where she was more comfortable. On March 23, 1828, Tayloe's father, Col. John Tayloe III, died. In 1816 Col. Tayloe had built six two-story houses facing Pennsylvania Avenue at 14th Street NW, and in 1817 had leased them to John Tennison who ran them as a hotel. The structures served as a hotel for the next three decades, the leaseholder and name changing several times: Williamson's Mansion Hotel, Fullers American House, and the City Hotel. He adopted his father's coat of arms, Purpure a sword palewise proper between two lions rampant addorsed [Argent?]. The sword John III and Benjamin displayed was an epee; the only child of Sarah Knowles Bolton, librarian Charles Knowles Bolton, considered that the lions were likely Ermine rather than Argent. Later career Residence in Washington, D.C. In 1828, Tayloe built his wife a house in Washington, D.C., directly across the street from the White House. The Tayloes did not immediately occupy their home, however. Tayloe had a strong political disagreement with the newly elected President, Andrew Jackson, and refused to move into the home. Instead, Tayloe leased